Organization of Grain Harvest Statistics in Siberia in 1930s

Abstract

Harvest statistics in USSR in the 1920s was based on techniques and approaches used in Russian Empire. In 1930 it became a subject of reforms. Statistical representatives of village councils who replaced voluntary correspondents were supposed to report to the district commissions information on specific\biological yield and the results of grain threshing. Regional commissions were obliged to summarize received information, check it and make corrections to primary materials for underestimation. In the early 1930s harvest statistics were doubtful. Amendments were subjective. Their value depended on the choice of behavioral strategies of the district and regional authorities. The size of the officially approved gross product did not depend on the real barn weight but on the political situation. At the same time, the basic indicator of its determination was growing yield, based on which grain procurement plans were approved. A higher degree of reliability of the accounting system should have been provided by Central and Regional State Commissions for Yield Accounting created in 1933. Central State Commission developed and applied methods of calculating the “optimal yield” (yield minus inevitable losses), “optimal economic yield” (excluding technically inevitable losses), “actual yield” (taking into account losses used on the farm). Amount of the losses was accounted during random inspections of farms. Despite the reforms, yield estimation remained politically driven. Harvest statistics were still largely propagandistic and mobilizing in nature. In 1937 state commissions were liquidated, and the national economic accounting services inherited the task of yield calculating. In 1939 procedure of harvest calculating was once again revised. Accounting average yield contained all losses, including those unused on the farm.